


The Great Shipwreck of Life

by aslightstep



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gratuitous Mangling of History, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Stony endgame, Tags Will Update As Story Progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-19 00:51:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14225532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aslightstep/pseuds/aslightstep
Summary: In the world of soulmates, Steve Rogers lives in fear of a second name, the ghost that haunted his youth and stalks his future. Tony Stark has no name at all, and fears nothing but himself.





	The Great Shipwreck of Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [krusca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krusca/gifts).
  * Inspired by [I Come With Knives](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9536438) by [aslightstep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aslightstep/pseuds/aslightstep). 



> This is my fill for last year's Stony Trumps Hate fest, requested by the lovely Krusca, who wanted a remix of my other story, I Come With Knives. As such, you might notice several parallels or inversions of the original work. I will try to update this semi-weekly, but I don't have a firm chapter count yet. I hope you all enjoy, and thanks once again to kru for the prompt, and a special thanks to nostalgicatsea, who served as my sounding board, listened to me whine, and half-beta'd for my beta-shy ass. 
> 
> Story title comes from another IAMX song of the same name, chapter 1 title semi comes from the song "I Found" by Amber Run, which I strongly recommend you listen to as well as "Don't Cry for Me" by Cobi, as they were my inspirations for much of this fic.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Steve is five, his soul-name solidifies, securing his future.
> 
> When Tony is twelve, his wrist is still bare, and he vows to build a future of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING for Tiberius Stone being a creep near the end, and general parenting of dubious quality.

“What is it this time, then?”

She jumped when he spoke. She hadn’t felt his presence at the door. She never did, anymore.

Her heart settled just as soon as it had soared. “Just a cold,” Sarah Rogers lied, and tucked the blankets more firmly around her son. “He’ll be better in no time, just you wait.”

“S’all we do anyway, wit’ him.” She didn’t have to look at her husband to hear the sneer in his voice but she wouldn’t have Steven waking up to his Da looking down on him with disgust. She stood and spun in one graceless motion, pushing her husband out of Steve’s tiny room and closing the door behind them. It was colder out here in their sparse living room. She longed to be back inside, leaning over the cheerful blue of Steve's blanket, even as the smell of death lingered in the air. Anything was better than here.

She leaned against the door, one ear listening, making sure Steve’s next raspy breath wasn’t his last, but both eyes, like always, were for her husband. Her soulmate.

When was the last time he had looked back at her, the one person his eyes should always be fixed upon? Not since the War, not since _Theodora Watts_. His eyes were distant, fixed on a point somewhere over her shoulder. 

“Your son is _sleeping_ ,” she hissed, trying for his attention. Joseph’s face twisted up, a shade of his old smile crossing his face, all malice now. She did not want to hear his next words.

“Aye, sleeping, like always. He’ll get his rest tonight, and then tomorrow, then what? Will it be the lungs or the legs this time? Rest won’t fix what ails him. You’ve coddled him too much. _Too **much** rest_ , I say.”

“He’ll hear you-”

“Oh, I doubt that. Deaf in one ear, innit he? I could shout the house down and he wouldn’t hear.”

 _You have,_ Sarah thought. _And he heard. And he hid and when you were gone, down to the docks or the bottom of a barrel, he crawled into my lap, ran his fingers over your name on my arm, and asked me why Da wasn’t happy._

 _Well, it isn’t my fault. None of this is my fault._ I’m _not the one who broke._

She didn’t say it out loud; she never did. At first it was out of hope that things would change, but more everyday it was out of fear. Joseph was not the same man she married. That man would have listened to her, but he died in the trench and sent back this monster wearing his face and another woman's name.

“Besides. I ain’t say nothin’ that wasn’t true, do I?” He was more present for a moment, staring at the door like he could see through it to his son within. “‘S torture, it is. Watching him suffer.”

 _You couldn’t even imagine_ , Sarah wanted to scream. She didn’t have the luxury of _watching_ as her only child shivered and shook through his illnesses. She held him through every one. She had sat at the side of dozens of deathbeds in that little room, only to wake and start anew. And she’d happily do it again, a thousand times more. Steve was her son.

 _Our son_ , she thought spitefully in her husband's direction. 

“Steve will be fine. He’s stubborn, and he’s strong-” Joseph snorts disgustingly and her voice rose. “-where it counts. His name is almost in. Only five, can you imagine, and almost a full mark. That means something, Joseph.”

“Means some poor bastard out there has been saddled with a corpse for a soulmate,” Joseph snarled.

“There are worse things,” she snapped back, and her eyes flickered once, twice, to Joseph’s right wrist.

He didn’t move for a long moment, and then it was a string had snapped within him. He lurched forward, the smell of stale whiskey on his breath choking her. “Say it plain, woman. Worse soulmates, you mean. Like me, you mean.”

 _You’re not mine_ , she meant. Not anymore. 

 

The two parents stared at each other for a moment. Joseph opened and closed his mouth several times, and once upon a time she would have known what he wanted to say without ever hearing the words. That was lost to them now. Then: “Wake me up if he dies,” Joseph finally said, and stumbled back to the broken down settee that took up most of their living room, grabbing for the bottle of cheap whiskey on the way. His sleeve pulled back as he did, and she could see the corner of a name on his right wrist. 

 _Theodora Watts_.

Her husband’s second soulmate. The name that ran parallel to her own, the one that was whispered in Sarah’s wake at the market. Joseph had never gone looking for the woman, but her presence persisted anyway, a specter in their marriage. Of all the scars left by the Great War on Joseph’s body, this was the only he could not carry with honor. If a soulbond was meant to make a person whole, then needing a second must mean that the person had fractured somewhere on the inside, and in doing so, had fractured the original connection. It spoke of weakness of the mind, and weakness in the bond.

_But I'm not the one who broke!_

Sarah watched her husband take a long pull of his drink, and then she slipped back into Steve’s room once more, sitting in the well-worn chair at his bedside. Her son’s eyes, so much like her own, stared back, glassy and unfocused.

“Mama,” he whispered. She took his hand, and didn’t cry, even as the tears stung her eyes. “Am I…?” 

“You are _fine_ , is what you are. Just fine.”

Lethargically, Steve dragged his left wrist over to his right fingers, clasped so loosely in hers. Together, they felt the weak pulse behind the smudged line on his wrist. His mark was so dark against his skin.  Most children didn’t receive their full soul-name until they were eight. But Steven had always been special.

 _Almost there, sweetheart_. He just had to hold on a little bit longer. The lines would solidify, and Steve would be safe.

She rung out the washcloth one handed, dipping it into the chipped bowl on the floor and placing it on Steve’s scorching forehead, and then settled in for the night, listening to her son’s breathing, welcoming each one.

 

When she woke, it was quiet. She couldn’t place what was so disquieting about this for a long moment, but then her eyes adjusted, and took in Steve, so silent and still on the bed, and she exploded into motion and sound. One hand felt blindly for his pulse while the other haphazardly reached for his shoulder, shaking it. “Steve,” she begged. She couldn’t lose him now, not when he was so close to the happiness she had only briefly tasted.

“Joseph!” she cried next, even as she knew it was useless. The room was filled with the cold light of dawn, and Joseph would already be gone to work, sleeping off last night’s drink in an unused lifeboat. She was alone.

Sarah gathered her son up close, willing her meager warmth into his small body. His skin felt hot against her clammy cheek. “ _Se do bheatha a Mhuire_ ,” she prayed into his hair. _Hail Mary, full of grace. Please, not him. You can't take him, too._  

“Mama.”

For a brief moment she was afraid reality had slipped away from her entirely, and then it came again.

“Mama, y' too close!”

“Steven!” Sarah cried, and gripped him even tighter, much to her son’s dismay. She could feel it now, the steady heartbeat, the skin no longer burning up from within. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” she couldn’t help but scold, pushing Steve back so she could get a good look at his face. His cheeks were still a little pink, and his fever was more banked than broken, but there was a glow to him she had never seen before.

“Sorry, Mama,” Steve muttered. He pulled his little arms into his chest, rubbing at his sternum a bit before letting them flop down again with a yawn, and that’s when she saw it.

A sleeve pulled back, and a name revealed. But it did not fill her with the sickness and hatred it did last night. Her heart rose up into her throat, buoyed by joy. There was a name where once there were smudges.  _I might have known_ , she thought as she read. For who better to complete Steve than the boy who had never left his side.

“Steven,” she began. There were tears in her voice, on her cheeks. “Stevie, sweetheart, your wrist.”

He looked down, then looked again, agape. “My name! Oh, it’s here! Oh, what's it say? J...A...M...”

“ _James_ , dear. James Buchananan Barnes.” She traced each name as she read it to him, and watched her son’s face light up with joy.

“Bucky? Mine is Bucky?” he asked. Then he frowned as he worked over his words and his eyes filled with a terrible hope as he peered up at her. “Bucky is mine?”

She nodded, scarcely able to speak, and as one, mother and son flew together, holding each other close for several minutes as the truth sunk in. Her little boy would be _safe_. “I’m so proud of you, Steven,” she told him. "So very proud."

“What’d I do?” he said into her shoulder.

“You got your mark.” She pulled back again, so she could look him in the eye. “You’re just five, and you already got your mark. Do you know what that means, sweetheart? They say you can’t know your soulmate until you know yourself, but you already knew who you are, Steve. Didn't you? My brave strong boy.”

Steve smiled at her, always shy under praise, because he never received enough of it. “Bucky’ll be happy,” he said. “I think. He doesn’t have his name yet.”

“He will soon.”

“And it’ll be mine?” Steve looked to her for reassurance, and she thought of all the fights he had gotten in at school when someone dared remark on the name on his father’s other wrist.

Steve’s life wouldn’t take the path hers had, she would make sure of it. She smiled at him. “Yours, and no other’s, my love. God has already determined that you’re meant for him. Most soulmates have to wait years more, but not you two. You’re special, Steve. Didn’t I always tell you so?”

“Special,” Steve echoed, his gaze drifting down to his wrist, touching the words now with a reverence he reserved for their family bible. “Me and Buck. Forever.”

Joseph looked at her like that once; before the War, before he changed, when he found comfort in her arms instead of drowning out the shadows of his mind with the drink.   She took Steve’s hand in her own, Joseph Rogers’ name parallel to Bucky Barnes', needing him to understand her. “That's right, sweetheart. Forever. But you have to care for it, make sure it grows as strong as you are."

"How do I do that?"

"You remember to stay true to yourself. If you do anything for your mother, you grab onto James tight, and never let go. Will you promise me?”

“Of course, Mama,” Steve swore, blithe but earnest. “I won’t let go.”

"Because there's only one person out there for you. He is your match. You musn't ever let that break, sweetheart."

Steve's eyes went wide, and a bit scared. "What if I do?" If there was anything in the world Steve hated besides bullies, it was disappointing people. Joseph had seen to both.

"You won't," she assured him, gathering him close again. Tiny arms wrapped around her back and she closed her eyes. "The name doesn't lie, Steve. Anyone ever tries to tell you differently, you remember that."

Steve looked at her then, eyes too blue, too knowing. “Is it hard, being soulmates?” he asked. “You and Da…”

“...It’s not hard at all,” she managed past the heavy stone that was her heart. “You just...you never break. Never yield. A soulmate is your other half. He's meant for you, and only you. And you are meant for him,” she whispered. "So you can't go changing on him, alright?"

"Yes, ma'am," Steve said sleepily, and she kissed his forehead in thanks.

Her son was still sick, of course, even though the fullness of his mark seemed to have revitalized him somewhat. She tucked him back in after that, then sat with him as he demanded to know all about soulmates. She told him, _mine came when I was eight. I found your father at fifteen. He had been waiting a long time, and he waited longer. We were very happy._ (She doesn't say, _the War came, and then you, and then Theodora Watts, and he hasn't truly smiled once in your entire life, except for the first time he saw you._ )

Joseph came home the next morning, took one look at the new mark on his son’s wrist and went pale, and disappeared again.

Though his own name had not come in yet, Bucky Barnes was still Steve’s best friend and could not be kept away for long. He appeared on the fourth day of Steve’s recovery, and Sarah stood in the doorway with James’ mother as Steve showed him his wrist.

“Oh!” was James’ reaction. The poor boy looked struck. “Oh, Stevie, that’s swell, ain’t it?”

“Real swell, Buck!” Steve replied. James clambered onto the bed with him, ignoring his mother’s protestations about Steve needing rest, and slung his arm around the younger boy’s shoulders, Steve’s left arm squeezed between them. James laid his own wrist next to it, the dark smudge taking up the entirety of the inside of his wrist.

“Mine isn’t there yet,” he frowned.

Steve shot a grin at his mother. “It will be, just you wait. You and me, Buck.”

There was a moment when James looked unsure, still staring at his wrist like he could make the letters solidify by sheer will, but then the clouds past and he hugged Steve closer. “Sure, pal. ‘Til the end of the line.”

She swallowed past the lump in her throat, thinking of five years spent sleeping next to a ghost. _I’m not the one who left_ , she told herself. 

(Joseph Rogers never came home. 

She didn't feel it when he died. She hadn't felt him in a long time. They threw dirt on his coffin, and James held Steve's hand the entire ceremony, and she didn't look at the grave. Her soulmate's body wasn't there. He had been dead for years.

 _I’m not the one who broke_ , Sarah thought, for the last time, and let them hand the flag to Steve.)

* * *

**1929**

"Stop squirming," Bucky admonished, his hand easily following Steve's bobbing and weaving to press his handkerchief against his split lip. Steve very manfully did not yelp in pain, but it was a close thing.

"I had him on the ropes," he said. With the cloth in the way it came out more like _"I ha hi o th' ro-es"_ but Bucky seemed to understand him anyway if his eye roll was any indication.

"Yeah, between you and Tommy, which one is going home with a split lip?"

Steve glared mulishly at the rough cotton of Bucky's jacket, ducking away from Bucky's hand. "I couldn't let him get away with it, Buck! You shoulda heard the way he talked about Arnie. Just because his mark hasn't filled all in yet - well everyone knows some people are late bloomers."

"Not everyone can be you, huh, Stevie?" Bucky said, a quirk in his brow. It was teasing, mostly, but it had taken two more years after Steve's name came in for Bucky's to solidify and it was still a sore spot some days. Everyone said that the longer it took for a person's mark to come in, the weaker a person was, but Steve knew Bucky. There was nothing weak about him. Nothing weak about Arnie, either, and Tommy Walcott deserved a good thumping for implying otherwise.

If only Steve had been able to give it. He looked down at his hands, then his wrist, at the strong black lines that had been there for over seven years now. Strong and true, that's what his mother said, that's why Steve tried to be, but his outsides never seemed to match. "Arnie's real patient, Buck. Ten years old and he's not worried at all. I think that's real brave."

"Ain't nothing cowardly about faith," Bucky agreed easily. He dabbed up the last of the blood and put his handkerchief away. "But people like to talk, Stevie. Sometimes they're fit to talk their mouths right off. Ma says if the world would just let them do that, we'd all be in a lot less trouble." He aimed a pointed look at Steve before carefully reaching under his arms to lift him up off the wall and onto his feet. 

Steve was still a little woozy, and more than a little indignant. He sagged against his soulmate and huffed. "I just couldn't, Bucky."

"I know, Stevie." Bucky's voice was soft as they slowly made their way down the street. The shops were already closing for the night, and their mothers would be angry they were out so late. "And...you know I wouldn't have you any other way. Only, I wish you knew how it felt sometimes, Stevie, seeing you black and blue."

"Oh, Buck..."

"I mean, I'm glad you stood up for Arnie, I am, Stevie, but you scare the daylights out of me some days! I woulda been right there beside you if I'd heard, so maybe next time, you wait for me, huh?" Bucky was working himself into a proper snit now. Steve craned his neck to look at his profile to see how serious it was. At thirteen, Bucky's features were just starting to change, and he looked more grown up everyday. It was hard not to feel left behind when they were apart, but when they were together Steve knew they couldn't ever be separated. Not that he'd ever let them be.

He got the grin lingering at the corner of Bucky's mouth and felt his own mouth curve in response. "And we fight 'em together?" Steve liked the sound of that. "Like in the stories?"

"Yeah, like proper legends. Evil-doers beware!" Bucky answered, brandishing his free fist in front of him. "Like Achilles and Patroclus. Taking on those thieving Trojans."

Steve wrinkled his nose, dismayed and annoyed. He was thinking of something a bit neater than a pair of dusty Greeks. "Bucky, one of them dies." Neither he nor Buck was ever gonna die. Well, everyone died, but when they went they were going together.

But Bucky, ignoring him, continued blithely on. "Yeah, for the other. Oh! Or maybe we fight for our country, like Brutus and Caesar, defending the Empire."

"Bucky," he gasped, stumbling to a stop. "No - no, no. Why would you even say that?" Brutus and Caesar - they were second soulmates. _**The**_ second soulmates and monsters, both of them. A cautionary tale his mother had told him not long after his father died, when he could still remember the other name Joseph Rogers bore.

There was even a saying, just for them. Most people only used the first bit, but they all still knew the second. 'Rome wasn't built in a day... _but it was lost on a name._ ' Marcus Brutus' name, exactly, scrawled across Julius Caesar's wrist after the death of his daughter, the beginning of his descent into madness. 

"Yeah, suppose that is a bit of a morbid pick, what with the murder," he heard Bucky muse, the blood rushing so fast through his ears the words seemed to come from a great distance.

"A bit-" Steve gasped. "One kills the other!" A mad tyrant, and a soul-killer, that's what Bucky was comparing them to.

Bucky was looking at him a bit strangely. "Well, it was for the good of their people, weren't it? He didn't let love get in the way of what was right. They had principles and they stuck to 'em. I like that. 'D like to think we wouldn't murder each other, though. Maybe just have a nice long sit-down about it."

But Steve didn't want to hear the logic of this particular twist. It was - no, it didn't even bear thinking about. That would never be them, that would never be Steve. Never break, never yield. "Let's," he pleaded. "Let's just make stories of our own. Can't I just be your Stevie, and you'll be my Bucky?"

He held his left hand out, wrist up, name bare. Bucky looked from his wrist to his face several times before his expression went sheepish. He reached his own arm out so that his left wrist rested on Steve's own. After a pleasurable moment of feeling each other's heartbeats through the physical manifestation of their bond, the oldest soulmate trick in the book, Steve had calmed down a bit.

Bucky grabbed his forearm and reeled him in. "Aw, Stevie. I didn't mean to upset you. Ms. Randall's just been warblin' on about the classics lately and its doing my head in. Just you wait 'til you have her next year. There was this band of brothers, the Sacred Band of Thebes? You'll get a good kick out of them."

Steve laughed as Bucky pulled a face. "It's alright, pal."

Bucky rubbed his back lightly and, quick as lightning, dropped a kiss on his cheek. He had started doing that recently; like the last dozen times, it nearly made Steve's heart beat out of his chest. The older boy pulled away and looped his arm around Steve's shoulders, setting them to a walk again. "I'll be your Bucky any day. My Stevie," he crooned.

"And we'll have adventures all our own. Somethin' grand. Like outta a Jules Verne book," Steve said. He could already imagine it. 

Bucky hummed a happy agreement and they strolled home like they were walking on clouds, each lost in their own imagination.

They'd make stories of their own, Steve decided. Where no one ever changed, or left, or died. Where there was no such thing as second soulmates.

* * *

 

* * *

Howard sat down heavily beside Obadiah, watching his friend watch his son. "Maria could hardly stand to look at him, this morning. I can't even imagine dinner tonight."

Obadiah patted his knee absent-mindedly. "Well, that's not unexpected, is it, old boy? She's always placed a lot of stock in soulmates." Obie threw a casual wink his way. "She would, wouldn't she, landing the cream of the crop!"

Obie meant well, but Howard couldn't quite smother the wince his words provoked. He was the lucky one, having Maria. She was the one who had to put up with his late nights, his admittedly lousy temper, SHIELD's constant pestering, and Tony, the son he'd asked her for. 

There was nothing in the world he could ever do to make up for Tony.

God, he still caught flashes of it in her face; that same look she had when the doctors handed Anthony Edward Stark over to his mother for the first time since the birth and she saw the boy's bare wrists. Not even the ghost of a smudge. He couldn't count how many times his wife had told him that having his name on her wrist throughout the war helped her keep going, and now she was handed a blank slate. To her, the lack of a soulmate meant the lack of a future. He'd never seen that kind of despair on his soulmate's face and he never wanted to see it again, but Tony would prove to make a it a habit of his to disappoint Howard.

Even after that, for years, Maria had been a saint, waiting and wishing and praying for things to change, but by Tony's fifth birthday, they all knew the truth. No name was coming. No name was responding. Because there was nothing in Tony to echo, nothing to finish, nothing to love.

No, Maria deserved better.

Today was Tony's eighth birthday, and his wrists were as bare as ever as he worked in the lab, placing pieces of metal together, carefully soldering here, twining wire there. Howard felt his lip curl as he watched; as always when faced with Tony's brilliance, he was torn between pride in his son and anger that the kid didn't even have the decency to be completely useless. If he'd been an idiot, Howard could've left Tony to his own devices a long time ago and happily ignored him. As it was, Howard couldn't stand to see that kind of potential ruined. He could already see in the curve of his little boy's fingers, the crook of his neck, the diligence in his eyes: Tony was going to be smarter than him someday. Tony was going to build the future. Howard still couldn't decide if it was more irresponsible to impede him, or set loose on the world a boy who'd been broken since he'd been born.

"I think my present was a bullseye," Obie said, inordinately pleased. Obie had always liked Tony. It was the one thing in the entire world the man had in common with Edwin Jarvis.

Just take this morning: Obadiah had come booming into the solemn quiet of their house, singing the birthday song to Tony before he was even halfway through the door, swanning up to the boy's room and depositing his gift of a new soldering iron kit with all the deference due to royalty. Tony never smiled, but he had come damn near close then. The boy's gaze had slid past Obadiah then, to his parents lingering in the doorway, his mother almost hidden behind Howard, and his face shuttered as he carefully pulled down the sleeves of his pajama top where they had ridden up, exposing his pale, bare wrists.

"You go too easy on him," Howard muttered now, his eyes falling to Tony's wrists again. His son wore sweaters and long sleeves exclusively now, bought a size too big so they swallowed his hands entirely or elastic sewn into the cuffs so they pulled tight across the wrist. Howard didn't know when that happened, for he never instructed Jarvis or Ana to adjust Tony's clothing, only that one day Maria had dropped a cup on the ground after six year old Tony had held his arms up for a hug, and the next day Tony was in a jacket that seemed glued to his wrists.

He suspected Tony had asked for it himself, but he could never quite bear to broach the topic with Jarvis, let alone Tony. Hell, he hadn't had a conversation with Tony in years. He'd never much liked kids, but he especially wasn't fond of those that stared at him with eyes just a bit too sharp, just a bit too judgmental for someone that couldn't manage what 99% of the population had. Maria still tried, somehow. She was always stronger than he had been. But it was breaking her heart, a little more everyday, to stare at the little person she had helped make and know that there was nothing inside him.

"Well," Obie chortled, breaking Howard out of his thoughts. "I have always been the carrot to your stick, old boy, haven't I? Besides, we can't really blame the boy for being born defective. Poor luck of the draw, I say. But if anyone can overcome it, it'll be a Stark."

"Kiss-ass," Howard accused fondly.

"Practical," Obie corrected. His eyes fixed on Tony with a certain gleam (And years from now, when distance has made the hurt that is his son lessen, he will see Obie looking at Tony with that same gleam and worry, but by then it will be too late. Tony will laugh in his face. 'Obie is the one person who's always been fair to me.' _The one person_ , Howard will think as his car is run into a tree and Death walks towards him. _Oh, God, I've been a fool._ )

Now, his old friend murmurs, "There's a lot worse things for a man in our line of work to be then soulless, Howard."

 _Soulless._ His mouth rounded over the syllables as the word beat in his brain like a pulse inside a cut, inexorable and painful. As if called, Tony's head lifted and turned towards the glass. Whatever warmth in his gaze there was while it passed over Obie, it froze for Howard. There was nothing in there. A genius with no heart. A body with no soul. With that word ringing in his ears, Howard could see the truth.

His son was a machine.

Beside him, Obie waved, then brought that same hand down to clamp onto Howard's shoulder and lead him away. "I'll be staying for dinner, of course," he said. "Can't resist your Ana's cake. I assume you're keeping it a surprise until then, but you can let old Obie in on it: what have you and Maria gotten for the boy this year?"

Maria, Howard knew, had gotten Tony a child-sized keyboard. He had caught Tony at the door to Maria's little den more than once, watching her play. Had scared him away a few times, too, until he realized one day that Maria knew Tony was watching. Mother and son didn't interact much, not since the broken cup, but in this one way, they were the same.

His wife didn't know about his present. Nobody did. Reaching inside his breast pocket, he pulled out the pamphlet and handed it over to Obie, who just barely glanced at it before doing a double-take.

"Boarding school?" he breathed, eyebrows climbing his forehead. "Are you sure, Howie? You've kept that boy locked up in here for eight years. Has he ever even talked to someone his own age-"

"No time like the present, then," Howard bit out. Obie's mouth snapped shut. "It's for the best. For everyone. Tony knows how to hide his condition and - and Maria can't do this anymore, Obie."

 _I can't either_ , he couldn't admit. 

 _It's too hard_ , he thought as he watched a little boy with icing smeared over his face test out a few of the keys on his new present with as much diligence as he'd given that circuit board he'd built when he was five. If he could've built Tony in a lab he couldn't have come up with a better result, but Tony was flesh and blood and broken, worse than a second soulmate. He should have been complete, not this unavoidable facsimile of life that had Maria's smile.

He still remembered Steve, his greatest creation, Bucky Barnes' name on his wrist and by his side. He should have never tried for more. Can't improve upon perfection. But he had, and this is what he got.

Tony was a failure. His _only_ failure. And Howard couldn't forgive either of them for that.

Maria said something and Tony turned towards him, something that might have been hope in his eyes for just a second before he blinked and it was gone. Howard didn't have to think about it. He placed the pamphlet on the table and slid it towards his son.

* * *

**1983**

"So what's it say?" Tiberius' breath was hot in his ear as the older boy leaned over his chair, leaving goosebumps in his wake. "Leaving me already, Antony?"

Tony pushed the heavy sheaf of papers away, following them down across the table until his head rested heavy on his folded arms. He was used to the weight of disappointment, but it still dragged him down sometimes. "Alas, I remain your loyal liege, Caesar," he mumbled into his elbow, hoping Ty couldn't hear the tears in his voice. "They said it was too soon for me."

Ty's hands came to rest on his shoulder, kneading a little. "How funny," he remarked as his thumbs hooked under Tony's collar, tracing his spine. The barest suggestion. "Isn't that what you always say to me?"

Tony shivered at the touch, not even bothered at the smug smirk he could practically feel aimed at the back of his neck. But his outstretched fingers rested just on the edge of the rejection letter from MIT, making it impossible to forget. "You don't deserve it," he whispered. 

Tiberius tsk-tsk'd him, like Tony was a fucking child. "Which one of us are you talking to, here?" Just to emphasize his point (and to be an ass), Tiberius' hands came down to latch onto Tony's wrists and squeeze.

It was inevitable that his roommate would figure out his secret at some point in the four years they'd lived together, no matter how diligent Tony was with his clothing. Ty liked to needle Tony about it every chance he got. Tony didn't mind so much most days; after eight years of his parents' barely being able to touch him or his wrists, Tiberius' blunt-faced jabs felt a bit like a hug.

But today, Tony hated him. Hated him for being right, hated him for seeing through Tony. Hated the name on his left wrist, just above Tony's own blank one. Whoever Sunset Bain was, she was in for a hell of a future.

"You had to know they wouldn't want you either."

Another rejection. Another failure. Story of his life.

"You have to be used to that by now."

He snarled, bucking Ty off and away and shooting to his feet. "Fuck off, Stone!" 

The day his parents had packed him off to Barnabus-St. Christopher's, Howard had stood in front of him, touched his chest with one finger and said 'We know there's nothing in there, don't we, boy?' He'd waited for Tony's nod before another touch came, this time to his forehead. 'This is all you've got. Don't let me down.' No more than you already have, his eyes said, and Tony had sworn to both of them he wouldn't.

If he could prove he was the smartest, the cleverest, the most original, maybe it wouldn't matter that his chest and eyes and arms were empty. Maybe Howard and Maria could love him anyway. Not all the way - no one could love Tony fully, he had proof of that - but just a sliver. And that would be enough.

He had been so sure MIT would accept him. So sure that they would see the value of his mind, that they would help prove himself to his parents. Now, with this rejection letter, he was left with nothing, once again. 

Tony couldn't let his parents know about this, couldn't let anyone know how much of a fuck-up he really was. It was bad enough that Ty knew. He whirled back around, intent on grabbing up his paper, but Tiberius was in the way, watching him with a calculating gleam in his eye.

"Move, Ty," he growled, wishing not the first time the other boy didn't have two years and four inches on him. 

"What are you going to do, Antony?" Tiberius was so patient, a cat with a mouse, and Tony could feel himself falling into a trap but he just couldn't stop.

Tony marched forward, intent on getting around him. "I'm gonna burn the stupid thing, what else?" He reached out, ready to snatch it up, when Tiberius caught him, one hand after the other. "Let go!"

"Don't," Tiberius said sternly. "Keep it. As a reminder."

"Of what?!" 

"Tony. My little genius, there's no need for all this," Ty said."You're wasting your energy and frankly I am exhausted watching you. Remember that article I showed you? Remember what it said?" 

Tiberius had read up on all the literature when he'd found out what Tony was. He had tracked down a series of medical journals that had been quietly published bi-annually for the last thirty years, documenting aberrations in soulbonds. Most articles concerned second soulmates, but some were about people like him, the bare-wristed. There were less than thirty known confirmed cases, upwards of one hundred when historical conjecture was accounted for, and doctors had analyzed the characteristics and behaviors of these people to find out what had gone wrong.

"You're a sociopath," Tiberius whispered. "Unfeeling, uncaring, unconcerned with the rest of us mere mortals. You don't give a fuck. Embrace it." And he leaned down and kissed Tony's blank wrists, one right after the other. Tony could feel his jaw drop and his heart begin to race. No one had ever...no one had dared...

Ty leaned back, looking Tony in the eye and smiling at what he found there. "You see?  The rest of us have love hardwired into our DNA, chained to a bunch of letters, but not you. You could do anything. You're completely free, Tony Stark. Quite frankly, I'm jealous."

Tony remembered his eighth birthday. Working on his first robot, and Obie and Howard at the window, and the door was cracked, and they all pretended he couldn't hear them call him 'soulless.' 

It didn't have to matter, Ty was saying. It didn't have to hurt.

"I'm not," he told Tiberius, but it was weak. 

"You are. You're just pretending you aren't." Then he took the MIT letter and pinned it to their corkboard hanging over the desk they shared. "A reminder," he said again, tapping it with one finger, and then he headed to dinner. At the door he stopped, and Tony could feel his stare on his back. "Think about it, Stark. Then get back to me. I have a feeling you and me could be having a lot more fun."

Tony remained in the same spot for a long moment afterwards, staring at letter on the wall. 

It didn't have to touch him, he told himself. It didn't.

But he carried the ache in his chest as the car pulled away from 890 Fifth Avenue, the last time he ever saw his house, like it was precious. He nurtured the memory of watching his mother play piano from the shadows, never being allowed into the light.  He dreamed of a soulmate every night, swimming through a vast ocean, searching for an impossible treasure. 

And further still, the defining moment of his short life: when he was six years old, he tried to hug his mother, and she dropped a tea cup to the ground. She had stepped on one of the pieces of glass before Jarvis could get to her, and her blood had smeared across the ground. Tony remembered that, bright red against white tile, the way he hurt his mother by merely existing.

He had carried those feelings with him because he thought it proved the universe wrong when it had left his wrists blank. He wasn't empty, or defective, or soulless. His heart was right there, it was just that nobody wanted it. He had vindicated, validated himself on that fact for twelve years.

But what if...what if he was just trying to fool himself?

When he was younger, before his mother gave up all hope, she told him stories of her experience escaping the Nazis and fascists as they took over Italy. She spoke of Howard Stark's name, showing it to Tony, even letting him touch the precious letters. Howard Stark meant she had a purpose. A future. That she would be loved. Howard Stark had saved her life.

What if God, the universe, whoever decided this cosmic bullshit looked at Tony's future and knew that he would do something so terrible he could never be loved by anyone? Saw something inherently lacking in an infant that no amount of wishing or trying could change?

He thought his whole life he was being punished, but maybe his blank wrists were someone else's salvation.

Above all things, Tony was a scientist. So he sat down on his bed, and he tested that hypothesis.  Lined the variables up, tested them one at a time, and came up with a theory that twisted something inside him with a permanence he wouldn't realize for years.

He, and all those other blank-wristed people, were outside the norm. Worse than second soulmates even, at least those people had names. Tony lacked a basic function of humanity. He certainly didn't feel human right now.

For a moment, he saw the secret of himself. _It didn't matter._ Fuck his pain, and fuck soulmates. It wasn't like they had always led perfect lives either. Just look at Brutus and Caesar. They'd destroyed each other for love.  _No one will ever love me_ , he acknowledged, vicious and victorious, for the very first time in his life. _I will never have that._  

(He wondered if that Caesar would have been jealous of Tony, too.)

In that moment, he had only himself, and it was enough. He built a model from the data; if the universe wouldn't give him a future, he'd make his own. He'd apply to MIT again next year, and next year he'd get in. He'd graduate, he'd take over Stark, and he'd change the world right under his father's nose. And they would fall over their feet to praise him while he laughed at them the whole time. He'd never love them back. He'd never care. See how they liked it.

He'd make himself untouchable on the outside, even if he never managed it within.

Ty was right. He felt _free_. God, he really owed the bastard now.

He clung to that, a brief shining moment when everything was perfect, but the hurt came back though like it always did, and Tony was left bereft, tears trickling down his face he couldn't remember crying. He wanted that feeling back, please. He'd chase after it for half his life.

Tony laid down, exhausted now, his right hand drifting automatically to clutch his left wrist to guard a secret that would never be told. As he slept, he dreamed his old dream, searching for somebody who wasn't coming. But this time he swam too far, too deep, and he froze. From the inside out.

(Screaming all the while.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> History stuff with Buck: I know it's not accurate, but history class isn't exactly accurate nowadays and 1920's America would A) not have nearly the amount or dissemination of information on hand and B) in this AU, history, art, culture is dominated by the sanctity of soulmates. So...everything's a bit skewed. Achilles and Patroclus are 100% validated because they are soulmates, whereas Brutus and Caesar are...both validated and villified. For the record, in this AU, Brutus and Caesar are the first real official recording of 'second soulmates' and of course, go catastrophically off the rails. Their peers did not, of course, attribute this to the political and social climate, but because Brutus and Caesar had two names and were therefore incomplete or 'broken' and weak men, and thus began a snowball effect that ruined the lives of thousands over the next few centuries. This is not necessary to the understanding of the story, I just like to blather endlessly.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the SLOWEST OF BURNS by the way, so if you want to wait until it's finished, I absolutely won't blame you.


End file.
